1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for operating equipment, manipulating information, or controlling environments based on people""s motions, postures, and conditions.
2. Related Art of the Invention
Certain conventional techniques for detecting people""s motions to operate equipment recognizes people""s gestures to operate televisions. (Japanese Patent Applications Laid Open No. 8-315154 and No. 8-211979). Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 8-315154 uses a camera to detect the position of the palm of a person""s hand and his or her gesture in order to operate a television.
Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 8-211979 uses the position and shape of a person""s hand detected by a camera to input characters to a portable personal computer.
These conventional approaches, however, fundamentally requires a person and an apparatus operated by the person to correspond on a one-to-one basis, and desirable operations are difficult to perform if there are multiple televisions or personal computers near the person or if there are multiple operators.
In general, there are often multiple apparatuses and people in a house or an office or out of doors, so if this apparatus is controlled using people""s motions, the people must be individually associated with the apparatuses. If, for example, multiple televisions are simultaneously operated, the conventional approaches do not allow a television to be operated or being operated to be distinguished. In addition, if there are several people in the room, the conventional approaches cannot determine who is changing the television channels or who can change the channels.
In view of these problems of the conventional apparatus, it is an object of this invention to provide a control method that can determine, despite the presence of multiple apparatuses and people in the neighborhood, the correspondence between the apparatuses and people to smoothly operate the apparatuses using the people""s motions, postures, and conditions.
This invention provides a control method characterized in that the attributes of one or several people are continuously or intermittently monitored to control predetermined equipment based on the detection of the people""s predetermined attribute. This invention also provides a control method characterized in that candidates for a control object and the content of control are determined based on the people""s predetermined attribute and in that a control object and the content of control are determined based on the candidates for a control object and the content of control. Furthermore, this invention provides a control method characterized in that based on the detection of the attributes of the several people, candidates for a control object and the content of control are determined for each of the people and in that a control object and the content of control are determined based on the candidates for a control object and the content of control.